Twitter’s Fail Whale Makes An Unceremonious Return

For those of you making you way to work or school this morning, you might be greeted with an old friend while checking your Twitter stream: The Fail Whale.

What could be the most loathed mascot on the Internet, Twitter’s Fail Whale has been popping up and ruining the start of the morning for many across the Internet. It’s unclear at this time what the issue with Twitter is as they’ve yet to update their Status blog.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Fail Whale, here is a little background on the big lug: The Fail Whale is employed by Twitter during periods of excessive downtime and is accompanied by the message “Twitter is over capacity. Please wait a moment and try again.”

Below are some tweets (when I could get them to load) of people venting their frustrations after seeing the Fail Whale.

@sohear
Steve O’HearIt looks like our Twitter login is swimming with the fail whale. 11 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@AnyaPalmer
Anya PalmerThat bloody fail whale is now OCCUPYING Twitter. Thank God for Echofon #occupytwitter 43 seconds ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto

@ItsGomezArmy
☞ мιѕѕ ιναηα ☜ ✫✯Fail Whale GTFO. 1 minute ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@theChinya
Chinmay Rane10 minutes. Fail Whale Message. Twitter Be Scalable. Use node.js . 2 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@deepfoo
deepfooI thought the Fail Whale was extinct. Oddly good to see the wee beastie again. 3 minutes ago via Twitter for iPad · powered by @socialditto